from there to here

Thanks for your kind comments about Miss Ivy, she's still a wheezeball but seems to be feeling better. Fever's still spiking at night but comes back down with panadol. Hopefully tomorrow she'll shake the virus and whether or not the asthma sticks around, we'll be waiting and seeing with her on that one.

We took a picnic down to Currarong today and met up with friends camping down there. What a gorgeous April day. Throwing together last minute food is getting harder without supplies, but there still looks to me to be quite a bit of food in the pantry and even the fridge, made more luscious by a basket delivered by my friend Karina going away and clearing out, hooray! Home grown toms! Greens! Cheese!

I've never been so happy to see a lettuce in my life.

You've heard it before, but we have to grow more of our own food. And if you're city-bound and can't, we have to find ways to step outside the vulnerable industrial system and create networks that can.

I'm not wrapping up the challenge, but I've already figured out a few things.

:: Coping with Armageddon is time consuming. And it makes a lot of dishes. It's a fun game but virtually impossible if you're working full time. (Hard enough finding the bread-making time while working part time.)

:: It would be much easier if we had a flourishing vegie garden. If all services really did stop and we couldn't shop, the first thing I'll run out of is apples. I need an apple tree.

:: If you're a milk-drinking family like we are, and you're not prepared to stock up on the UHT or powdered stuff, you kinda need access to a dairy, which is a bit unrealistic for lots of people. A sensible person would say, do without milk. I tell you, I'd create a war to get milk for a baby who needed it. Nine meals from anarchy? I think hunger will create chaos but the impulse to feed our children will make fiercely crazy bandits out of us. Well, me. You too, I think.

And meanwhile, I've been making cream cheese.

You know, yoghurt tied up in muslin for a couple of days to drain out the whey. Like the yoghurt maple ball idea without the extras. I used homemade plain yoghurt and the cream cheese is quite tart, and lighter than the bought stuff, but very fresh and very good.

On the way home from Currarong we stopped into our friends' family farm, and organic dairy in Greenwell Point. It's the dairy that supplies South Coast Dairy with their organic milk – it's pretty rare these days to be able to see the cows who make your milk, unless you have a clandestine and totally illegal relationship with a dairy supplying you directly.

I tried to fit a calf in the boot of the car.

Foiled by the pram.

I have a very soft spot for Holsteins.

We don't really need that pram do we?

Moo.

xxx

9 Comments on “from there to here”

I wonder whether your cream cheese is what it is meant to be like. And I wonder whether what we buy in the supermarket is ‘doctored’ to suit our ever-tinkered-with tastebuds. I’ve been researching a little bit about the evils of sugar…it’s making me wonder about a lot of things.

I’ve just followed some links to your blog and been delighted to read about your recent challenge. We are on a downsizing move to make lots of small things – our own pickled onions, pickled carrots, bread, yoghurt, etc. The time consuming aspect is true, but I’ve found that it all gets easier as the children get older. When the youngest is about three I think it’s the cruisy end of the street. That’s the theory of course!

Mom24boys

April 10, 2012 at 8:47 am

Yes, Armageddon IS time consuming. I really would rather make most everything from scratch and gleaned from my own garden. However, I have recently become the primary bread-winner in our family of 6 due to my husband’s suddenly declining health. At least I know how to do without, make from scratch and improvise so if Armageddon does descend in my lifetime… well, I won’t be working outside the home then so I would be able to “get it all done” then. Right?

I have access to raw milk for virtually free- but no time to go the 45 minutes to pick it up and then process is for cottage cheese, butter, ricotta, etc. 🙁 I can turn out some great bread and rolls but now have to rely on the inferior bread maker and store bought. It is spring here and I still haven’t gotten a bit of planting done! Forget about the yogurt, home baking (but the kids have been working on that), and great dinners. We’re lucky to do what I call “half-scratch” cooking around here. At least it isn’t take-away but gosh, it’s not what my heart cries out to provide for my family.

Anyway, I applaud your efforts to explore what it could really be like if the Big Machine was shut down. It is good to know just what we are capable of and the areas we never considered would be difficult.

Tammi

April 10, 2012 at 9:06 pm

With the amount of dairy we go through we should have shares in a dairy farm. I make all our yoghurt/cream cheese and more recently ricotta but would find it extremely hard if we didn’t have access to milk at all.
Glad to hear Ivy is on the mend 🙂
x

You are writing about ‘my’ area. Where I grew up. We were down there visiting Gran and Pops on the weekend and we spent the most glorious day at Greenwell Point last week. Doing the same things that I had done as a child. x